Bear Field

It was a moody, overcast midsummer day, and I was intensely focused driving at a high rate of speed. I was in my 2011 Ford Escape, speeding along, my windows down and the rush of air blowing through my hair. 

VROOM! A couple of muscle cars blew past me, startling me with their loud engines. Within the blink of an eye, they were out of sight, leaving me in the dust. 

The Airport Expressway, a large multi-lane road connecting the interstate to the local airport, was several miles long. Today, there was a drag race event going on, using the expressway as the venue. I wanted to compete and be part of the "cool kids", so I was attempting to drag race with my aging 2011 Ford Escape. Although it had a small 4-cylinder engine, I added racing stripes to the body, in an attempt to somehow make it go faster and be more aerodynamic. 

Needless to say... I don't win a whole lot of drag races in my 4-cylinder 2011 Ford Escape. In fact... I win zero percent of them.

Although I couldn't keep up with all the racers' fast-paced lives, I did manage to cross the finish line... eventually. 

Currently, we were at the beginning of the expressway, but this time, the race was a circuit that would take us through the airport itself. When the traffic light turned green, we all sped off down the expressway. 

By the time I got to the airport entrance, all the other racers were long gone, possibly already having completed the circuit. The route took me through the airport parking lot, through maintenance driveways, and finally onto the main runway. The end of the runway was the finish line. Just beyond that was a fence that bordered the airport, and beyond the border was an abandoned motorsports racetrack, called Baer Field Speedway, that had been closed since 2019. It was now overgrown and falling apart, being reclaimed by nature. 

Now at the start of the runway, I accelerated for the final stretch. The finish line was only a few hundred yards from the boundary, so I would have very little time to stop. 

However... something unexpected happened. The song "The Power of Love" came on the radio, and the moment I hit 85 MPH, a portal made of blue lightning flashed open and I was enveloped in a bright blue light for barely a second or two. Suddenly, I was rushing through a field of soybeans, with the abandoned race track just ahead. I put on the breaks and came to a stop. 

What the hell just happened? 

I got out and looked around. There was no airport. In it's place were empty grassy fields as far as the eye could see. I was now in the middle of nowhere, with only the abandoned race track. 

~~~~~~~~

I had been here before. Years ago, in my youth. My mother's boyfriend did racing as a hobby, and I had memories of being driven around the track in a race car, feeling what it was like to go so fast. 

Presently, the place was a forgotten memory of a bygone era. It had sat abandoned for years, now falling apart. The asphalt track was cracked and in shambles, and everything, including the bleachers and other structures, were all overgrown with brush and tall grass. 

I wandered around, remembering how this place had once roared - like a bear - with the sound of high-octane engines, growling like a grizzly bear as they sped in a loop. Today, it was silent and still, motionless and forlorn. 

The longer I loitered in this lost memory, the more I began wander into the wild side of the place. At some point, I stepped through a veil and I went behind the shroud and into yet another version of the abandoned track. 

I suddenly found myself in an endless meadow. The track and bleachers and other structures were all gone. In field, there were only rusty and decaying old race cars scattered at random. Sitting in or atop some of the cars were brown bears. 

The bears all looked at me, clearly noticing my presence. I wasn't sure if I should run, but then I realized they were all just minding their own business, and they were harmless, lacking in taking an interest in me. 

As if in a Purgatory all their own, the bears were seemingly waiting for a race that would never come. Some of the bears were literally sitting in the driver's seat, pawing at the steering wheel, as if they were steering toward a destination they would never arrive at. 

All the bears in the field seemed melancholic, lamenting the anemoia for a lost or unrealized dream that had seemingly been doomed from the start. Feeling pity for the broken bears, I understood that they would never cross the finish line. 

~~~~~~~~

Like returning to the same spot that you started at on a race track, this reality worked the same way. I wandered in the same direction through the bear field,  but I always ended up back at the same bunch of defunct cars. 

Was there a way to break the loop? Would I be able to escape this shrouded Purgatory? 

Perhaps I was lost forever, trapped here. 

How would I be able to... BEAR it?